Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Theoktistos (d. 855) on the Eternal Existence of Mary

  

Theoktistos believed that the Virgin Mary had always existed and that she was not conceived through, from or during physical intercourse. (G. Fatouros [ed.], Theodori Studitae epistulae, CFHB Series Berolinensis [Berlin: Water de Gruyter, 1992], no. 490 II. 16-20) (Eirini Panou, “The Theological Substance of St. Anna’s Motherhood in Byzantine Homilies and Art,” in The Reception of the Virgin in Byzantium: Marian Narratives in Texts and Images, ed. Thomas Arentzen and Mary B. Cunningham [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019], 65)